Are you going to open the store and wait for the customer to walk in?

Taking a business online does not guarantee success more than opening a store and waiting for your customers to walk right through the door. You must identify your customers. There should be a marketing effort. You have to determine customer needs and then develop methods of producing appropriate services and products.

Ask these questions and find answers to them first.
Who are my possible customers?
What do my customers need?
Where are my customers located?
What motivates my customers to buy?
When do my customers buy?

You need to identify marketing trends. You have to change with the changing environment and be prepared to change accordingly.

Branding your product or service is very important. People trust branded product or service than a product or service without proper branding.

Improve your customer awareness of your business by the appearance of your website and its association with desirable traits such as great prices and neat content.

Offer free stuff like e-books, software and offer something free if the customer purchases an item for a certain value. You can also offer gift certificates, prizes and free samples. For items like software, free trial versions will be very effective. But keep in mind that software must not effect other applications in the customer’s computer. Your customer will not return to you if that happens.

Provide how to information, and easy to use help

Ask customer feedback and suggestions about how to improve your service.

Create products designed to customer specification.

Offer an e-newsletter.

Provide each customer with an individual shopping experience.

Maintain a good and friendly relationship with your customers.

Customers will start to walk in through your door if you make the right effort. I wish you the best with your website.

Storefront services

Storefront services provide you with a number of services including software to build an online store instantly in your browser using onscreen instructions, Website building software, e-mail, transaction processing and Web hosting. Some of these services are so simple that you do not need special technical knowledge. Storefront services provide you with online tools such as selecting a suitable template for your website and also you can enter information about your products and services and select the products you want to sell. You can select payment and shipping options as well. These services may charge you with a set up fee and a monthly fee for hosting your storefront. Notice the storefront services provided by smallbusiness.miva.com. and merchandizer.com

To host and create a store using a storefront hosting service, you will have to complete a series of forms. You can create a serviceable online store in few hours if you have products to sell and can supply all the information about your company that the storefront service requires.

Once you have set up the store, you can do website maintenance such as editing and adding new content and pictures to your store using your browser. Your activities may depend on the plan you purchase. You can select plans which will suite you the most.

As payment options, you might not need to obtain a merchant account depending on the service you select. Some services provide you payment options as well as their services. These storefront services are ideal for small business people. You do not have to be a computer geek to perform changes in your store front.

The main disadvantage of using some storefront hosting services is the lack of design flexibility. In addition, not all services can be easily customized to meet the specific needs of every business.

MIVA Merchant, with Store Morph Technology™, provides you with Powerful Store Design Tools, Catalogue Management, Inventory Tracking and Product Merchandising, Order Processing and Customer Management, Shipping Calculation and Payment Processing, Data Access and Storage, Affiliate Programs and Marketing Services, Easy-to-Use Administration Tools, Modular Architecture and also Documentation and Support. This again depends on the plan you purchase.

Merchandizer.com also provides you with rang of services for a monthly fee that varies on the plan you select. They provide you with Setup Features, Customer Support Functionality, Store Room & Inventory Controls, Store Interface Features, Promotions, Order Management, Customer Management and Product Management. They provide you with different shopping cart solutions, and their Digital goods support enables merchants to sell non-physical items such as software, documents, graphics, or any product or service that does not require shipping.

These are two services I have noticed as good service providers. But you can select the service provider according to your requirements.

What is the most important?

Hi friends, I am a bit busy these days. I am trying to write at least two articles a week.
For the present, I would like to ask three questions. These questions will be important to you in your work and everyday life including business. Please write your answers in the comments area. This is not a challenge; I just want to know your answers. Please feel free to answer these questions

1) What is the most important time?
2) Who is the most important person?
3) What is the most important thing to do?

My good wishes will always be with you.

Preparing to go online

Always we talk about marketing and planning sticky websites. But before you set up an online store of any kind, you need to access internet and obtain a web host. If you are doing serious business you cannot depend on public computers. You have to have your own computer system. There are Internet Service Providers, (ISP) to connect your computer via a cable or telephone line to Internet. Secondly, you need to find a web hosting provider to store the pages of your website for users to access. Your website services depend on the web hosting provider you select. It is very important to do primary research before you choose one.

An Internet Service Provider (ISP) connects your computer to the Internet. ISP provides you with an e-mail address and limited or full features of the Internet depending on the plan you purchase. Some plans are for limited downloads and limited services. Other plans include unlimited access. If you are doing serious business, unlimited access is the best plan you should choose.

Web hosting company that hosts a web site is a ‘web hosting provider’. You can select your ISP to host your website or select a different company to be your web host. Most Internet Service Providers give you limited amount of storage for your files that make up a website. But they do not provide you with necessary e-commerce facilities. You can set up a free website with a free web hosting service such as Free Server. But again you will not be allowed to conduct business on these free websites. They are limited in space and you might be allowed to have only two pages. It is advisable to select a web host carefully. It may depend upon what you really want to do with your website and the facilities your web host allows you according to their different plans. For example, Network Solutions describes the different plans that are available with them. You can select the plan according to your need.

Using web hosting services, you can create you web pages and upload them to your website using your computer. Your website is stored on the server, (web hosts computer) and connected to the internet. FTP is the commonly used protocol for exchanging files over internet. There must be two computers involved, your server (Web host), and your computer (Client). Once connected, you can do a number of operations such as uploading files to the server and downloading from the server including renaming and deleting files using your secure code. A full web hosting service will allow you to use CGI scripts. CGI script is a custom written common gateway Interface used in connection with other computers such as ordering information. Many web hosting services also provide multiple e-mail accounts, Shopping carts and a secure server to handle credit card processing. They also provide you with web page templates so that you can quickly create your own site. Other advantage of having a web hosting service is that you can have access to technical support when you need it.

Some companies with technical and financial resources, host their own website because they need high volume transactions. They also have sufficient staff to maintain their entire system.

E-Commerce Challenges

Although most companies are anxious to develop an e-commerce strategy, they also have to be informed about possible pitfalls. There are both advantages and disadvantages in e-commerce.

Challenges faced by most web developers are creating a website that would keep the customers on the site until they make a purchase. If the Website is difficult to navigate, products are not described well, and Forms are not easy to fill out. Links are broken, pictures take too long to load or have disappeared; harder it would be to keep the customer. A website that keeps the potential customer entertained is called a sticky website.

Although starting involves some expenses, a brick and mortar store will benefit from a user friendly website and the website will gain recognition to the business not only locally, but round the world. It will be open 24 hours a day and every day. Online presence is an advantage for any business to be recognised.

Traditionally many businesses operate as middle men between a business and the consumer. Agents, brokers, and sales representatives are all examples of middlemen. Authority of these middlemen are fast being made obsolete because consumers can go directly to a company’s web site and purchase products and services without help from an agent or other intermediary (disintermediation).

Intermediation is not going to finish yet. While traditional intermediaries are made obsolete, a new kind of cyber intermediaries that could not have existed before the internet has immerged. Cyber intermediaries include auction sites, payment – processing sites, and web site store front services.

When a website displays a Buy it! Button and a customer clicks on the button, credit card information is processed by an online processor company and the vendor pays the processing company a transaction fee. This is a Cyber intermediary

For E-Commerce, There is no world wide standard established yet. From a vendor’s point of view, a website is an advantage to advertise worldwide. A website can reach narrow market segments regardless of location. E-transactions can reduce costs related to processing orders. Internet presence can streamline business operations by incorporating business to business transactions and form virtual communities.

High start up cost is a disadvantage. Difficulty of keeping data current and upgraded can be another disadvantage; this becomes more when there are few available trained employees. E-Commerce transactions are sometimes difficult to combine with current systems. Language barriers might cause difficulty in doing transactions. Government tax regulations are different from country to country, and it always is confusing. Identifying a world wide standard is the main solution to these problems.